Flavors of Wealth
by Lucy Zhang
1.
My cousin married a rich man. The type whose parents own multiple luxury apartments in Fuzhou and pave a road of flowers and gold for their son and daughter-in-law to walk. I avoid looking at the photos that side of the family shares in our WeChat group, and fortunately WeChat offloads old photos so I’m never tempted to dig them up. Ignoring them is easy enough when those messages are sent at a different time zone across the world. I haven’t seen my cousin in over seven years. I’ve built this image of her: constantly hopping to Japan for duty free makeup, working several hours as an accountant just to say she has a job, going out for Haidilao every night. She asked my mom ten years ago to bring Lancôme makeup from the United States. At the time, I didn’t realize you wore makeup outside of stage performances. Now she has a husband who can buy her brand name goods—my mom doesn’t know what to bring anymore for the next visit to China.
2.
My husband likes to tell me that these people’s lives are too easy and they don’t know what it means to grind. All he did as a child was study, and all his parents told him was that he needed to work hard, and all his parents told the other parents was “my son doesn’t even want to play video games so we never need to buy that stuff” even though they never gave him a chance to play. “I was never free to do as I pleased,” he laments. “And now I married you.” But I let him buy a used Mercedes AMG E53 because I thought it’d stop his complaints for several months, so I’m not sure where he’s going with that. He’s trying to get me to sell my Civic, but if I drive the AMG to work, I’ll dent it instantly. So instead he canceled my sketchy $25/month Geico car insurance plan that covered “absolutely nothing” and added me to his plan.
3.
Dad likes to tell me that eggs and chicken used to be expensive, but now they’re cheaper than the vegetables he buys from Mei Dong. Vegetables are a luxury, a one-size-fits-all cure for your every ailment, I say. But I can tell he’s changed now that he’s 65 and still employed just for the giggles. He throws out food after the second day because it’s not “fresh” and buys abalone from Costco, convinced it’s a great deal. I try to teach him that Costco is a scam and their meats cost more than any proper Asian grocery store, but he claims I’m signing myself up for food poison when I get the discount cuts from 99 ranch or the 50-pound bags of onions from Smart & Final.
4.
Mom is deathly afraid our future children will inherit my stingy nature. She tells me I need to stop hoarding all the office snacks and taking them home to fill the pantry. And to stop showering in cold water to cut down on the energy and water bill. And to actually take care of our yard since the HOA will one day come after us—my husband has since hired a gardener who comes when I’m working and leaves when I’m working so I’m not really sure what they’re doing besides mowing the lawn. “Amazon has great dresses for under $25,” I say. Mom tells me that we need to dress well when we visit China because last time, when I was in grade school, she dressed us in old t-shirts and rags that we planned to toss in China and replace with new, cheap clothing from those thrift stores on the streets where you could haggle down a dress for half its price. Grandma pulled Mom aside to complain that she didn’t send Mom to the United States for her grandchildren to be raised looking like beggars. Joke’s on her now though—brand name clothing is a fortune in China compared to the USA.
5.
Sister is like me. She took me and my husband to a taco restaurant, El Paisa, that my husband was convinced he’d be shot in. El Paisa made the most delicious caldo de pescado though. The place only accepted cash so my sister left for an ATM around the corner. My husband sat at our table drinking wine from my sister’s old Princeton bottle, something she’d especially prepared to calm his nerves. “I didn’t come to the United States to get shot,” my husband’s glare told me. After our order of tacos arrived—buche, tripa, lengua, cheek meat, all the off cuts that tasted tender—flies hovered around our paper plates. I swatted them away as meat juice dribbled down my chin. My husband continued to drink.
6.
I learned only recently that Dad refused to pay my college tuition so Mom paid it out of her personal bank account. She tells me today that she considers it her best investment since I found my job and husband through my Alma mater. I suppose it isn’t so surprising: Dad threatened me many times throughout middle school and high school that he wouldn’t pay a dime if I continued to starve myself. He’d prefer I take a full ride to Rutgers, and at the time, hung up on prestige and name brand, I’d rather shrivel and evaporate than go to a state school. Mom dislikes arguing so I imagine she stopped bringing tuition up to Dad altogether and hooked up her bank account to the bursar payment system. Dad never possessed much faith in my future. He has long since stopped telling me “you might as well be dead,” but I don’t suppose he has many expectations either. Dad is the type of guy who believes he’s right and acts on it, and when he’s wrong, he erects a reality distortion field and steps around his misconception like a turd in the middle of a sidewalk.
Dad bought an air fryer several weeks ago and now tosses everything into it: sweet potatoes, tilapia, pork belly, kaofu. A combination of the air fryer, Tik Tok, and This Old House brings him a joy in life that no additional amount of money can budge. He tries to convince me to buy an air fryer even though a year ago, I offered to get him one as a gift and he refused: “I don’t want any more electronic waste in this house.” I stopped buying him Apple products with my company discount and started gifting him with packs of dark chocolate and jars of pickles—at least he could eat those after his evening swims at the fitness center. When he visits, he asks why we’ve stocked our fridge with nothing but chicken thighs, carrots, and onions. “You earn enough, you shouldn’t penny pinch on things like food,” he lectures. “I wouldn’t trust 99 Ranch for seafood. Costco quality is much more reliable.” My response is always: “My household, my rules.”
I buy imported Chinese green teas as requested by Mom, though. She believes tea will cure my ailments—my erratic stomach aches, my migraines after hour-long meetings, my dry eyes from staring at a screen with too small text in a terminal window. I don’t drink the green tea. I save them for when she visits.
Lucy Zhang writes, codes, and watches anime. Her work has appeared in Split Lip Magazine, CRAFT, The Spectacle, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbooks HOLLOWED (Thirty West Publishing) and ABSORPTION (Harbor Review). Find her at https://lucyzhang.tech or on Twitter @Dango_Ramen.
